Thoughts on Power Conditioners

[YK Thom]

I had an incident last night while watching TV - an odd sort of low ringing tone coming from all my speakers tweeters. At first I thought it was something outside, lowered the volume and it was still there. Completely shut down the entire system and restarted it about five minutes later. The sound was gone. We have terrible power up here, prone to spikes, brown outs etc. I do use a large surge protector. I have started doing a little research on power conditioners and am curious as to whether or not any of you are using them, are they snake oil or do they work? If they are the answer, are there half decent brands that won't break the bank?

I'm really hoping it is not my AR receiver going.

[Chris A]

I could easily see where a pretty authoritative power supply (more then just conditioning/simple isolation) would be apropos in your particular case. 

 

I think of electric power aboard ships or in forward operating areas as an equivalent situation to a smaller power grid with less ability to recover from transients (surges, spikes, nulls, and the like).  In every case where there's electronics that are doing computing (digital) and analog amplification, power conditioners were found, in my experience, or the failure rates were too expensive to keep equipment in proper running order.  In those cases, there's a good reason for those conditioners. 

 

Same story for power grids that are on the edge of civilization (like yours, apparently).  I've heard horror stories about what the supplied power can actually be like. 

 

Chris

[muel]

!Warning - anecdotal reply!

 

The quality of your power depends on a lot of things that you can't control as a home owner.  The benefits of anything you add inline will vary depending on the quality as it arrives at your outlet.  I don't think you see as much difference if your power is already pretty good.  

I don't think surge suppressors do much for you other than protect from minor surges (maybe).  

I do sometimes use a couple of APC Smart-UPS battery backups successfully due to the brown and black outs we've had in the past.  The electric company has improved our power so it probably isn't needed as much here anymore.  I was told that it would constrain my system as it would not be able to provide enough power fast enough and my bass would suffer.  My experience is that I have not been able to hear a difference whether using the Smart UPS or not.  I DO hear a difference if I remove the UberBUSS power conditioner.   Note that I did not hear a change in sound when I first started using the UberBUSS.   Later, I improved my low end by working to level out some peaks and nulls.  Once I had done that, I could notice the loss of bass when removing the UberBUSS. 

They have some info about power on the PS Audio site - https://www.psaudio.com/product-category/power/

 

 

[Emile]

I am using an APC H10 ... don't even know if it qualifies as a power "conditioner," but think it was a good (and fairly cheap) investment.  Living in Florida, we often have "lightning" outages. Unit has worked well as protection for those.  Also, the other day, it completely "cut out" several times as the line voltage dropped to "too low" voltage levels.

Cheers, Emile

[Emile]

add-on ... The APC H10 (or newer black version H10BLK) "officially" is a power "conditioner." Yes; recommended.

Cheers, Emile  

[YK Thom]

Thanks, I'll google up the APC H10 .